Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, March 23

• Uber-Ola battle goes from the streets to court: Uber alleges Ola employees are making bookings on its platform by creating fake accounts, seeks Rs50 crore in damages; Ola denies the charges. Uber alleged that Ola is intentionally causing it to lose sales. Uber alleged in court that Ola’s employees are making bookings on Uber’s platform by creating fake accounts and then cancelling them. This is the equivalent of a shopping site’s employee placing orders on a rival site and then returning the goods for no good reason. Uber calculated the total loss incurred by it because of such alleged practices by Ola and sought damages worthRs.496,164,780 from the latter. A total of “93,859 fake accounts” have been created by Ola, which have been used to make “4,05,649 false bookings” across various cities that were later cancelled, it said. Such cancellations roughly amounted to 8-10% of its total bookings, Uber added. Uber and Ola are fighting for dominance of India’s cab business that, according to Ola’s largest investor SoftBank Group, may be worth $7 billion by 2020. Justice Vipin Sanghi, who was hearing the matter, issued notices to both ANI Technologies Ltd (Ola) and Serendipity Infolabs (TaxiForSure, acquired by Ola) asking for replies to be filed before the next date. Ola’s statement denying all allegations was also recorded. A day after Alexander’s interview was published, a senior Ola official said the company’s newly launched low-cost offering, Micro, will soon do more daily cab rides than all of Uber India.According to US-based Uber, the company has wiped out Ola’s massive lead in a year. “In January last year, we were at 5% market share. Now we are right at the edge of 50%. I would say that within the next 30 days we would beat them (Ola). We will surpass them very, very shortly,” Alexander had said in an interview on 16 March.

• Chip-Card Payment System Delays Frustrate Retailers: Avi Kaner, a co-owner of the Morton Williams supermarket chain in New York, has spent about $700,000 to update the payment terminals at his stores. Trouble is, he cannot turn them on. The new terminals can accept credit and debit cards with embedded digital chips, a security feature intended to reduce the number of fraudulent purchases. But before the payment systems can work, they must be certified, a process that Mr. Kaner and many retailers around the country are waiting to happen. In the case of Morton Williams, the holdup has lasted several months. The cost of waiting, retailers say, is piling up. Until recently, banks covered much of the cost of fraudulent purchases. Since Oct. 1, though, merchants that cannot accept chip cards have had to shoulder the cost of fraud, and banks have not been shy about passing along the bill. “It’s been very frustrating,” Mr. Kaner said in an interview last week at his office in the Bronx, the home of his family-owned business. He bought most of the equipment he needed before Oct. 1, he said, and has been waiting months to get it certified. The delay, he said, pointing to a tall pile of paperwork, has cost him thousands of dollars in payments for fraudulent purchases. The long delays are just the latest black eye for the deployment of the new systems. Some consumers have not yet received new cards. Many merchants have not bought the updated equipment. And even when the cards and the terminals have been updated, they have generated confusion and slow lines. Many of the complications were widely predicted, but the certification system has added an unexpected wrinkle — and lots of finger-pointing. Banks say that retailers waited till the last minute to update their terminals. Retailers point to financial ties between the banks and the companies that provide certification, saying there is no motivation to move faster.

• Uber offers hackers 'treasure map' to find computer flaws: Uber, the high-flying transportation firm, is releasing a technical map of its computer and communications systems and inviting hackers to find weaknesses in exchange for cash bounties. While so-called "bug bounties" are not new, Uber's move shows how mainstream companies are increasingly relying on independent computer researchers to help them bolster their systems. It also indicates growing acceptance of the idea that making computer code public can make systems more secure, a philosophy that has long been advocated by the open-source software movement. Uber's “Treasure Map” details the ride-hailing company's software infrastructure, identifies what sorts of data might be exposed inadvertently and suggests what types of flaws are the most likely to be found. HackerOne, a San Francisco rival called Bugcrowd and other startups have helped accelerate efforts to tap the independent security community to identify serious programming mistakes before criminals or spies do. They can serve as intermediaries between researchers and companies, and sometimes vet their findings. A decade ago, hackers pointing out problems feared arrest but they can now earn modest sums from platforms like HackerOne. Firms such as Uber, looking to bolster their defenses, don’t pay as much as criminals and military contractors who are looking for tools to carry out offensive attacks, but they offer options to those who would prefer to act as "white hats." Bugcrowd Chief Executive Officer Casey Ellis said he has seen a surge in corporate clients asking for private bounty programs that are open to selected researchers. “That increases the amount of trust you are giving to the researchers,” Ellis said. “We run trusted programs where people get prerelease versions of Internet of Things devices or access to source code.

• Domo takes on Slack with $130 million at $2 billion+ valuation: Utah-based Domo has been a force in the enterprise space for a few years with its data management platforms, but the team is poised for growth with an additional $130 million in Series D funding from existing and new investors, including BlackRock, Credit Suisse and others. These $130 million are an addition to Domo’s previously announced $200 million Series D round. The company says it is now valued at $2 billion.  “We didn’t need the money,” Domo founder and CEO Josh James said of the funding round. He called it a “nice buffer,” but insists that the team didn’t need the cash and plans to go public within the year. Domo also today launched its app store, a mix of about 1,000 free and freemium apps, which can be customized for any company. The company is also introducing a free messaging service with threaded conversations, which James refers to as a Slack competitor. With more than 1,000 customers, including eBay and MasterCard, James said the team has achieved $100 million in bookings so far and that revenue is doubling. Domo has 800 employees and may hire another 500 in 2016. James previously founded web analytics platform Omniture, taking it public and eventually selling it to Adobe for $1.8 billion. The serial entrepreneur thinks he has what it takes to build something even bigger.